General research interests and goals:

The Research Group Translational Imaging belongs to the Department of Neuroimaging and to the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. Its goal is to establish and optimize translational imaging at a high field 9.4T animal scanner.

Bridging the gap between preclinical and clinical research is essential for the development in psychiatric research. We want to realize this step via Translational Imaging. In the preclinical part there currently exist excellent and well validated genetic and behavioral animal models for alcohol dependency, depression, dementia and other psychiatric illnesses. E.g. we use genetic animal models of psychiatric diseases by means of breeding or specific elimination of individual genes for intermediate endophenotyping. With the use of high-field MRI we take advantage of a tool that enables multiple intra-individual measurements and therefore the direct quantification of gene x environment x therapy interactions on brain function.